44 | JANUARY 6 • 2022 

A THRILLER, FATHER/
DAUGHTER SURGEONS, 
PIVOTING WOMEN 
AND MORE
The 355, an action spy thrill-
er, opens in theaters Jan. 
7. Jessica Chastain stars 
as a CIA secret agent who 
teams up with other inter-
national agents to recover 
a secret weapon. 
Simon Kinberg, 49, 
directed the film and 
he co-wrote it. He 
has co-written several 
X-Men films and he’s 
also a top film produc-
er. 
Check out Good 
Sam, a CBS series 
that premiered on 
Jan. 5. New episodes 
air Wednesdays at 9 
p.m. It’s easy to catch 
encore showings 
on-demand or free 
online. 
Here’s the capsule 
plot: Dr. Samantha 
Griffith (Sophia Bush) 
becomes the top sur-
geon at her hospital 
after her boss and 
father, Dr. Rob Griffith 
(British Jewish actor 
Jason Isaacs, 58), falls 
into a coma. Her life 
becomes complicated when 
he awakens and wants to 
resume surgery. She’s now 
her father’s boss and deci-
sions about his professional 
career are now in her hands. 
Isaacs was raised in a reli-
gious Jewish home, but he 
is not religious as an adult. 
He is best known for playing 
Lucius Malfoy in the Harry 
Potter movies. His list of star-
ring or co-starring roles goes 
back decades. But he hasn’t 
had the best luck in picking 
roles. Most of his films were 
so/so in quality and weren’t 

box-office hits. Likewise, 
his TV series record isn’t 
stellar. He has co-starred in 
two American TV series that 
weren’t renewed after their 
first 13 episodes aired.
Do check out Isaacs in 
The Death of Stalin (2017), a 
critically acclaimed film that 
somehow managed to be 

funny and factually accurate. 
It depicted the fierce jockey-
ing to be Stalin’s successor 
(1953) as the dictator lay 
dying. Isaacs co-stars as 
Marshall Zhukov, the Soviet 
Union’s greatest WWII hero. 
All the would-be Stalin suc-
cessors courted Zhukov. 
(Historians really love this 
movie.)
Pivoting, a dramedy series, 
premieres on Jan. 9 (9 p.m., 
Fox). Here’s the premise: 
Three middle-aged women, 
who are friends, are jarred 
by the sudden death of a 

mutual friend. They decide 
that “life is short” and they 
must take chances to shake 
up their lives. In other words, 
pivot from what they have 
been doing. 
Ginnifer Goodwin, 43, 
plays Jodie, one of the three 
friends. Her most memo-
rable roles include playing 
the third wife of a 
polygamous ren-
egade Mormon in 
Big Love on HBO 
(2006-2011); a 
romance-seeking 
young woman in the 
hit film He’s Not Just 
That Into You (2010); 
and Snow White 
on the ABC series 
Once Upon a Time 
(2011-2018). 
Goodwin is the 
daughter of a 
non-Jewish father 
and a Jewish moth-
er. She was raised 
“both” Jewish and 
Unitarian (with 
more exposure to 
Judaism). In 2013, 
she said that she 
had left religion 
behind her 10 years 
before, but she 
had recently made a 
choice to embrace Judaism. 
The PBS celebrity ancestry 
show, Finding Your Roots, 
began its eighth season Jan. 
4. The 21 celebs profiled 
this season include actress 
Pamela Adlon (fourth epi-
sode) and director/writer 
Damon Lindelof (ninth epi-
sode). I’ll say more about 
them just before their epi-
sode premieres. 
I previously noted that 
Willie Garson died last 
September, age 57. He 
was best known for playing 
Stanford Blatch, the gay 

best friend of star character 
Carrie, on Sex and the City. 
I wrote that it wasn’t clear 
whether Garson had filmed 
episodes of the Sex and the 
City reboot, And Just Like 
That, before his death from 
cancer. 
Garson did appear in the 
first four episodes of And 
Just Like That. His character 
was written out of the series 
in the Dec. 19 episode (the 
excuse being that he was 
taking a big job in Japan). 
Garson wasn’t gay in “real 
life,” but he didn’t want to 
talk about that. He thought 
that telling the media that 
you’re straight, while playing 
a gay character, could be 
taken by some that there is 
something wrong with being 
gay. 
 His friendship with Sarah 
Jessica Parker (Carrie) 
pre-dated Sex and the City. 
In a recent interview, she 
said she kept his illness con-
fidential. Knowing his condi-
tion, she worried about the 
big health risk Garson took 
by filming during the pan-
demic. Parker also worried 
about the emotions Garson 
must have felt as his char-
acter attended the funeral 
(scene) of Carrie’s husband, 
Mr. Big.
I recently learned that 
Garson was long involved 
with a woman who didn’t 
want children. Garson did 
and, after they broke-up, he 
adopted a 7-year-old boy. 
Reports are that Garson 
decided to stop acting in 
And Just episodes so he 
could spend his last months 
at home with Nathan, his 
son. Nathan, now 20, posted 
a moving statement about 
how much he loved his 
father on Instagram. 

CELEBRITY NEWS

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

ARTS&LIFE

LISA FRANCHOT VIA WIKIPEDIA

The late Willie Garson

